Is Indoor Air Quality Making Us Sick? – Matt Schaubroeck (Transcript)

Now you probably knew about many of these problems already, and you might even know that there are some solutions that are commonly in place. Two main strategies to improve air quality in buildings:

1. The first, we ventilate. We push the contaminated air out by bringing more fresh air in from outdoors.
2. The second, we filter. We circulate and trap contaminants from air already inside of the room.

Well, that’s it. TED Talk over. Right? Problem solved. Let’s all breathe a deep sigh of relief. The reality is a little more complicated.

The Infrastructure Gap

Many buildings do not have the infrastructure to properly handle ventilation or filtration at adequate levels in many of the buildings where we spend our time, and our health is suffering as a result. Infrastructure and equipment in buildings loses efficiency over time, and when that happens, it just can’t do the job as effectively as it once used to. Older buildings might never even have had that equipment at all in the first place, and equipment has never been resolved since. So the impact of this infrastructure gap is poor air quality in more spaces than you know, and that has an impact on all of our health.

Health Impacts of Poor Air Quality

What does that mean for you?

It means that you can be feeling uncomfortable, itchy and dry skin, eyes, runny nose, sneezing, coughing. All of these things are common symptoms of poor air quality in buildings. It can affect your mental well-being. It can have an impact on your cognitive behavior, making it more difficult to complete complex or even simple tasks. It can make you feel tired, groggy.

It can decrease your performance and productivity, and it can also have more severe health consequences, what we call sick building syndrome, to the point you might feel so unwell you need to leave that space. And if you have existing respiratory issues like asthma, poor air quality can actually trigger some of those symptoms. We all breathe the same air in buildings, but because it’s not something that we see or touch, it’s not something that we often think about.

A Personal Journey into Air Quality

In fact, I only started thinking about air quality quite recently. I spent the last 6 years running a data company that measures and analyzes the environment inside of commercial buildings. And even with a company like that, there was really no demand for air quality. It wasn’t something that was on our radar. As you might imagine, that changed a little in 2020.

The Pandemic’s Impact on Air Quality Awareness

When the global pandemic hit, the air around us suddenly became a top global priority, and research and policies were coming out to find ways to make us safe. This was really important because one infected person could potentially infect so many others just by being in the same room.

And so we were given advice. We were told to ventilate. Stay 6 feet apart so that there’s fresh air between you. We were told to filter. Wear a mask to prevent any contaminants from coming into your airway.

Now these didn’t negate the risk because research was coming up about airborne viruses that found that they can actually travel far distances much more than 6 feet even through a building’s HVAC system. They could hover airborne in one place for hours at a time. And as the pandemic started to subside a little bit, we saw that there was another gap here in this discourse. What about all the other contaminants in the air? Seasonal flus, allergens, other viruses, bacteria.

These things are more common than you probably know in buildings, particularly those that are not practicing good ventilation or filtration. So now you’re probably thinking, “Ugh. Buildings are a bit of a petri dish. Gross. Get me out of here. I will see you in nature.”

The Outdoor Air Quality Crisis

Last year, Canada experienced the worst wildfire season in our history. The air was filled with smoke, covering the sky and changing the color of the sky for days at a time. Suddenly, outdoor air wasn’t the safe source for our lungs. And with climate change, this problem is actually getting worse.

This is one symptom of a broader trend. Because in addition to spewing CO2 into the atmosphere and cooking the planet, vehicle emissions and other burning of fossil fuels, they are releasing particulates into the air, and these particulates are finding their way into our buildings and into our lungs. So suddenly then we have two dueling crises to keep us safe from indoor air risks. We threw open our windows, let the air in, and then we had to shut the windows very quickly to make sure that we kept ourselves safe from smog and pollution. How are we supposed to navigate this as both of these problems become more common and more severe?

Solutions to Indoor Air Quality Issues

It’s not that we don’t know how to resolve these issues. The science is actually quite clear on remedies. The issue is that for the most part, we either don’t know which problems exist in which buildings or we do know, and we’re choosing not to act. These remedies are generally fairly simple and fairly inexpensive. You can replace or upgrade filters in your building’s HVAC system.

You can increase the ventilation fresh air intake so that more bad air is getting pushed out and more fresh air is getting circulated in. If you don’t know what is happening in your building, you hire an expert. They come in. They give you an audit with a checklist. Here’s what’s not working. Here’s an action plan on how to fix it.

It really can be as straightforward as that, and this is really important for us to go through these steps because better air quality helps everyone. It means that you are more alert. It means you’re feeling healthier. It means you’re taking fewer sick days.

The Economic Impact of Improved Air Quality

Now there is an economic impact to this, and a recent study by Harvard showed that the average net cost of increasing ventilation to safe levels in any building is about $40 per person per year. And you can actually decrease that cost by investing in energy efficiency solutions. So there is a cost, but isn’t our collective health worth it? We are spending so much time inside of these spaces where these solutions can be possible and quite easy to implement.

Personal Experience with Air Quality Improvement

How easy? In my own house a few years ago, when I had guests over, I would discover after a few hours that they would start getting tired, yawning, getting a little sleepy. And my first reaction was, well, I must be a boring host. But that can’t be true because I’m very fun. And so I started to explore. I started to measure my own home’s air quality.

And what I found was fascinating. The air quality in this old nearly century-old house had old equipment that could not keep up when there’s more than 2 people in the house. So when people were over for a long period of time, CO2 levels would go up, and everyone was starting to feel those effects. They were getting groggy. They were getting tired.

Now when you come over to my house as a guest, you will see there’s always a window open. Yes. Even January, but it means that people coming over, they feel alert. They feel healthy, and it cost me almost nothing on heating costs to have that one window open, by the way. So that problem is effectively solved.

Air Quality in Large Buildings

Now larger variability. It’s actually a bit of a black box. Large buildings, it’s hard to know what’s going on at all times. But inside of these buildings, you can have drastically different air quality levels even in rooms right next to each other. And one of the types of buildings that I would test often are schools where the impact of poor air quality can be quite severe.

For students and teachers working in a poor air environment, that means increased absenteeism, fewer days in the classroom, and it also has been proven to result in lower test scores. The quality of students’ education is suffering because of the air that they’re breathing. So when I would go in to test a building, I would go and make sure that I’m testing room by room so the building managers, when presented with this information, would be fully informed on the steps that they needed to take to make sure that students, teachers, and administrators were working in a safe and healthy environment.

Taking Action for Better Air Quality

These are the kinds of solutions that we need to be enacting in buildings, actionable, effective, and affordable. And I am here today to help make this a reality in your lives too.

Be aware of the signs of poor air quality. If you have dry, itchy skin, seething, coughing, sniffing, if you’re feeling groggy a lot inside and those feelings go away when you’re outside, your building is a likely culprit. And if so, take action. Speak to your office manager. Speak to your landlord. Ask them what concrete steps they are taking to improve that air quality.

And you can do this with data in hand. So the sensor that I brought—I’m very fun at parties. I will bring this occasionally to other houses and on airplanes. And, you maybe you can’t see it from the back row, but there’s a real-time sensor that’s showing CO2 levels and a little happy face here. Be comforted by the happy face. That means things are good.

Now if CO2 levels are rising over 1000 parts per million, this happy face gets a little less happy. And if it rises over 1500 parts per million, this face is getting upset. And if this face gets upset, that means it’s time for you to start taking action because your health is at risk of getting compromised.

Now you don’t need to buy a sensor as fancy as this. You can get a CO2 sensor online for under $100. In fact, you don’t need to buy a sensor at all. I’m not here to sell you sensors. But the data that they provide can be very insightful and powerful when you are making your case.

Because I’ve had several conversations with building managers over the years that even when presented with data showing that there’s poor air quality, are choosing not to act because they don’t want to incur the retrofit costs. We can’t keep letting costs drive decisions around our collective health.

A Call for Systematic Change

Systematic change is possible to improve air quality. Governments and businesses have the policy and financial tools at their disposal to raise quality standards in buildings, while occupants can advocate loudly enough to ensure that this remains a top of mind issue, and it’s essential that we take these steps. Advocacy is so important because poor air quality is more than just about potentially affecting you or your neighbor or your coworker.

Poor air quality is a global problem perpetuating a global health crisis. It’s time for us to start prioritizing the air we breathe, especially when every building can be part of the solution. So let’s start with the buildings where you are spending your time. Take a deep breath, and let’s get started. Thank you.

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